Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Corruption And The Rules Of Engagement

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The fight
against cor­ruption has been dominating national discourse since the inception
of the Buhari ad­ministration. The Rules of Engagement of the Nige­rian Armed
Forces recently weighed in as a topic for de­bate. Discussions on corrup­tion
have remained central for two reasons: Candidate Buhari indexed his presiden­tial
campaign on it. And it is the one topic President Buhari seizes every
opportunity to declaim impassioned commit­ment.

*President Buhari

At the annual Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation
Lecture in Abuja
last week, he was at his sanctimonious best: “Without our collective will to
resist corrupt acts as a people, it will be difficult to win the war. Nigeria has
been brought almost to her knees by decades of corruption and mismanagement of
the public treasury. We must come to a point when we must all collec­tively say
‘Enough is Enough.’”

Unfortunately, the Presi­dent’s anti-corruption
rheto­ric, and the manner his gov­ernment is prosecuting the war point to
duplicity. This is because the fight against entrenched corruption can­not
succeed unless it is sys­tematized. But Buhari’s anti-corruption war is bereft
of system. It is selective. It is running on the wheels of me­dia hysteria. It
is unconcerned with preventive measures. It is overloaded in censure and sanction.
It is, therefore, bound to end in tragic failure. Commentators unwilling to
acknowledge the foregoing cannot honestly claim to love the man or support his
presi­dency.

Since last week the media has been awash with
reports of the misapplied billions re­covered from the plunder of the Sani
Abacha junta. Yet, President Buhari insists to this day that General Abacha was
not corrupt! That’s one! Two – from Femi Aribisala in Fighting corruption with
double standards and human rights abuses (Vanguard No­vember 15, 2015): “A
judicial commission of enquiry set up by the RiversState
govern­ment maintained that, un­der former governor Rotimi Amaechi, a whopping
N53 billion disappeared from the Rivers State Reserve Fund. Similarly,
Babatunde Fashola was accused of spending N78 million of government money
upgrading his personal web­site. Nevertheless, the EFCC has not picked up the
gaunt­let on any of these allegations. Neither have Amaechi and Fashola ever
been summoned for questioning.” Rather, they have been rewarded with Cabinet
appointments.

*Chuks Iloegbunam

How does anyone expect
concerted national action in a fight that is patently tainted with blatant
political partisan­ship and double standards?

This leads to the dubious manner in which
corruption has been defined and con­fined to the narrowness of the looting of
public funds, a fac­tor militating against the anti-corruption war. Any good
dictionary will see corruption as: “lack of integrity or hon­esty; especially
susceptibility to bribery; use of a position of trust for dishonest gain.” In
this light of the true mean­ing of corruption, Nigerians should examine two
recent military/civilian incidents in which the term, Rule of En­gagement, was
used to justify anti-democracy. Nearly three weeks ago, pro-Biafra dem­onstrators
blocked the Onit­sha end of the NigerBridge.
Although the demonstrators were unarmed, and although claims of violence
against them remain unsubstantiated, the number of demonstrators now counted as
shot dead at pointblank range by secu­rity men has climbed to nine.

Does the Rule of
Engagement in a democracy support such brutality?

Last Saturday the Army re­ported that it clashed
with members of the Shiite sect in Zaria.
According to the Army spokesman, the sect mem­bers tried to assassinate the
Chief of Army Staff. “The sect members, numbering hun­dreds and carrying danger­ous
weapons, barricaded the roads with bonfires, heavy stones and tyres. They
refused all entreaties to disperse and then started firing and pelt­ing the
convoy with danger­ous objects.” The Army’s press release conceals more than it
reveals.

What were the Shiites
“firing”? “Heavy stones” and “tyres”?

The Army’s response left casualties said to
number in the hundreds.

That’s not the way to do it in a democracy.
Protesters could be arrested. Teargas could be used to disperse them. Or water
cannons. In extreme cases rubber bul­lets could be fired. Some 50,000
protesters occupied Wall Street in New
York from September 17, 2011. Days later, security
forces removed them without firing a single gunshot. By the end of Oc­tober,
Occupy protests had taken place in over 951 cities across 82 countries. The pro­tests
were against financial inequalities. In none of these Occupy protests was a
single protester killed.

Of course, foreign exam­ples of genuine
democratic practice may be too far for comfort. But it is on record that in
January 2012, there was OccupyGaniFawehinmiPark in Lagos by thousands protesting the removal of
fuel subsidy. After five days, the Army dislodged the protesters without firing
a single shot, without killing anyone. That was when the much-abused and
much-maligned Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was President!

Under Obasanjo, there
were Odi and Zaki Biam in which thousands of peas­ants were shot dead. Buhari
is less than seven months in office and he isn’t doing badly so far! It all
boils down to the same Army acting different scripts under various Com­manders-in-Chief.
People still cheering in the face of this corrupted fight against cor­ruption,
and this corrupted interpretation of Rules of En­gagement can be sure of one
thing: Theirs cannot be the final word.

*Chuks Iloegbunam, an eminent essayist and author of several books is a columnist with a national newspaper